


Small Victories

by rushvalleys (breakthisspell)



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Custom Hawke, F/M, Mid-Act 2, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 12:52:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7362220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breakthisspell/pseuds/rushvalleys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawke looks for a way out. Varric looks for a way in. They meet somewhere in the middle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Small Victories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fortheloveofhawke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortheloveofhawke/gifts).



> Written for [theresadraws](http://archiveofourown.org/users/theresadraws/pseuds/theresadraws) for the Hawke/Varric Hightown Funk exchange, using their purple rogue Niamh Hawke! I truthfully stepped into the exchange a little last minute and went with a mixture of your requested prompts and an idea I had been sitting on for a H/V fic. But I love the idea of Hawke and Varric flirting back and forth to no avail and am also fascinated with Hawke's healing process throughout DA2 since so little of it is portrayed in-game, and I had such a great time with your Hawke! Niamh is such a cool gal and I hope I did her justice.
> 
> A very big thank you to [Megan](http://archiveofourown.org/users/meggannn) for looking this over!

“What about him?”

Varric rolls his eyes. “The bartender? Too easy, Hawke.”

“Well,” Hawke says, pressing her palm to the table and leaning forward, her face moving closer to his, “if it’s so easy, why don’t you tell me?”

Varric tries to tune out Hawke’s new proximity to him as he clears his throat. It’s hard—her scent, a strangely sweet mixture of ale, sweat, and Leandra’s herbal washing soap, colors the conversation as her face hovers near his. “Well, no one becomes a bartender in Kirkwall—much less the Hanged Man—unless you’ve found yourself in some deep shit.”

Hawke snorts. “With that logic, I should take up bartending.”

“Okay, fine. You want the specifics? The chain of events that led him to this particular spot, on this particular night, in _this_ particular hellspawn of a town—“

“ _Yes,_ Varric.”

He furrows his brow, cracks his knuckles, and finally clears his throat. “Okay. He’s from Ferelden, but he’s not a refugee or anything dramatic,” he says, and Hawke snorts again. It’s hard to remember that just a few years ago, Hawke was nothing more than a scrappy refugee herself, that she wasn’t always a Hightown bigshot who struck gold on some botched expedition. Varric thinks privately that the struggle adds some color to her character, makes her edges rough in a way that can’t be sanded down by even the most delicate author.

Of course, his own writing is far from delicate, and he could never base a character in his serials after her. His own writing is messy and wish-fulfilling when it’s based on personal matters. So he decides that maybe it’s best to keep those wishes to himself, to never let them see the light of day unless it’s Hawke who decides otherwise.

He swats at Hawke with one hand before he continues. “Alright, he hit a rough patch—got into trouble with some debt collectors in Denerim after investing in the wrong people. He left his wife and kids behind before the Blight and tried to find some work here. He couldn’t, naturally, so he bet on nug races hoping to strike it rich. But he didn’t—naturally—so now he squats here.”

“Nug races?” Hawke laughs. It’s a guffawing ugly laugh, _Maker_ it’s ugly, but it’s so undeniably Niamh. It’s awkward and out of place, larger and louder than is appropriate but so natural that it makes his stomach churn at the thought that she finds him amusing, though he’s made her laugh hundreds of times. Hawke looms over him, she trips over her long legs, laughs at things that aren’t funny and lets her companions poke fun at her as they loot from dead smugglers in Darktown. She’s far from the dashing hero others--himself included, he reluctantly admits--paint her as, but the stories and the embellishments don’t quite do Hawke justice. He likes to save the real Hawke for himself, for their friends and her family and his memory.

Hawke is her laugh, Varric decides in a small moment of clarity—not what you expected, but who or what you needed all the same.

“Yeah, nug races,” Varric says. “I couldn’t have him losing his money over some Wicked Grace games. A writing trick: if you want to make someone unsympathetic, you have to put some distance between you and the character.” He smirks, takes a gulp of his ale, and adds, “Losing Wicked Grace is too close to home. For the both of us.”

“Nice trick,” Hawke says, elbows on the table, head resting on two fists, “got anything more interesting?”

There’s a look in her eye, a dark but gleaming glow, which puts a pause in the conversation. 

Interesting. Huh. 

Varric disconnects as he calculates his next move, the next plot point in the romance serial he’s mentally writing about him and her, the one that will never hit print for fault of being too messy and too wish-fulfilling. Does he level with Hawke here? Shelve the conversation? Offer to show her something more _interesting_ in his suite?

He has to restrain himself from doing anything that puts himself in a vulnerable position, because he knows that Hawke isn’t really here for him right now. She’s here, hours after their friends’ Wicked Grace game had ended and on her fifth cup of flavorless ale because she can’t go home, because her house has ghosts. It has the shadow of her sister, looming outside the doorway, never to set foot in the estate. It has Leandra, her shouts to Niamh from across the house replaced with a haunting silence that crowds the hallways. Hawke’s not here for him; she’s here to forget, and any tryst that Varric could imagine for tonight would end poorly.

Another time, he wagers with himself. They’ll be here again, some other night, and Hawke will spend the night sending noncommittal flirtations his way, and Varric will privately wonder how she looks in her small clothes.

He finally decides on his angle. “Uh-uh, Hawke. I do believe it’s your turn.”

“Ugh, fine.” She rolls her eyes and scans the room. “Pick someone.”

Varric follows her line of sight, then covertly points to a dark-skinned woman talking to a younger blonde lady sitting across the table. “Her.”

“Hm,” Hawke leans forward to get a better view, pushing herself further toward him, with her face closer to his than it has been all night. He swallows a lump in his throat as he really smells the ale on her breath, the soap she washes her dark mass of hair with. “All right. She’s…in an unhappy marriage, she’s got four kids who don’t care much for her and two dogs...two small, yappy dogs that might as well be rats. She and the blonde are, um…huh.” Hawke pauses, drumming her fingers on the table as she ponders. “Maybe they’re having an affair. She’s got an apartment down the block from here, so while the first woman tells her family she’s visiting her sick mother in Anders’ clinic, she’s really here. Or, you know, canoodling in the blonde lady’s apartment.” Hawke smirks. “Of course, Anders doesn’t know that his clinic is the only thing keeping that woman’s marriage from falling to bits. He might crack under the pressure if he did.”

“Quite tawdry of you, Hawke,” Varric replies teasingly.

He gets Hawke to blush ever so slightly, her brown cheeks turning dark. “What? It’s not tawdry, it’s just...cheap entertainment. I didn’t realize I was being judged for my performance.”

“Hawke, if I wanted to judge you on your _performance,_ we’d be doing something completely different,” Varric replies without thinking.

Shit, Varric curses internally.

He recovers before she can notice that he ever said anything incriminating, he hopes. “So, it’s my turn. Choose someone.”

Hawke’s eyes glinting at him, big and brown and captivating. “Me.”

“You?”

She nods. “Yup. What’s my story?”

Varric has to say, he’s surprised. Hawke isn’t usually too bold. She second guesses herself, trips over her words, and backpedals until she reaches an answer that’s comfortable. The alcohol, the ambience, the something must be getting to her. Maybe he’s getting to her, he hopes.

Varric frowns. “You were born in Ferelden. Just about everything about you screams dog lord, and you’re a little proud of it. And that _everything_ reminds you of your family, but you don’t talk about your family that much. Not unless asked, anyway.”

Hawke looks at her hands in sudden fascination. “That’s the boring stuff,” she whines.

“Fine, fine. Anyway, you’ve always been looking for something exciting to do. Sowed your oats or whatever the Ferelden saying is with the kids in Lothering—men, women, what have you—and enlisted to fight in Ostagar because it sounded like something to do. Carver followed you in even though he probably shouldn’t have, and you spent the entire time babysitting him. Then you wound up here, and walked right into a whole lot of excitement, for better or worse.”

“Hm,” Hawke grunts, and Varric can tell she’s waiting to hear something better as he hears the drumming of her fingers against the table.

Varric frowns. “Uh, what about--once when you were a kid, you tried to pawn off your brother to a merchant? Leandra gave you and Carver money to buy food for dinner, and when he wasn’t paying attention, you made an offer to some sleazy guy selling rusty swords.”

“Would’ve just used the chanter’s board,” Hawke says coolly. “They’ve got one in every Ferelden town. A much more efficient system than bartering.”

“You’re…” Varric spitballs, racks his brain, grasps at straws. “You’re a tough and lovable rogue who’s secretly a hopeless romantic?"

“Not even remotely,” she groans. Her fingers still drum along the wood table, her gaze downward.

“Damn, Hawke, what do you want me to tell you? That life has been hard on you? That you let yourself be happy back in Lothering, then you came here and one shitty thing after another happened to you, and you try to convince everyone that you’re fine by telling piss poor jokes and losing your money to Isabela every other night? That we all know you’re not fine?” 

It’s silent for a moment. Varric wonders if he crossed a line somewhere.

Finally, she speaks. “Yeah, actually.”

“Didn’t realize you came here to be verbally abused,” Varric snorts.

“I just don’t want to be bullshitted,” Hawke sighs. “How do you figure I’m not fine?”

“People who are doing well in life don’t spend their entire night at the Hanged Man, Hawke.”

Hawke chuckles. “What does that say about you, then? You've spent more nights here than I have. You _live_ here.” 

_“Anyway,”_ Varric interludes, “to conclude, I’ve seen you in your prime, Hawke, before life dealt you the crap hand you’ve got. You just did what you wanted to, jumped head first, put yourself in uncomfortable situations. Now you just hesitate. You talk, but you don’t do anymore.”

“Oh yeah?” Hawke lays her palms flat against the table and pushes herself toward him. “What would I be doing, anyway? I’m guessing you have ideas.”

“You wouldn’t….you wouldn’t, uh…let there be tension. You would just make up your mind and act, and you wouldn’t beat around the bush and make people guess at whether you’re interested in them or not. And maybe the things you would act on would be…uh…reciprocated by the other party.” Varric stumbles on his words. “Maybe. Depending on who the other party is, of course.”

“Hm, quite tawdry, Varric,” she parrots, picking the grime off her nails. “Tell me about this hypothetical other party. Are they tall? Short? Any particular species? Chest hair, by any chance?”

Varric chuckles. “Well, I believe it’s your turn to play the game. You tell me their life story.”

“Well,” Hawke begins, “I can’t really say much about their past, to be honest with you. But there’s some family drama. Alcoholic mom, shit brother—ah. Sorry. Probably rude of me. Anyway, they try to detach themselves and make the world seem like a dismal place one serial at a time, but really they pay off the guys around Lowtown so they don’t hurt their naïve elven friend and indulge a poor orphan girl in drinks each night.” She keeps going, in a lower voice that borders on a whisper, “and he’s also one to talk right now. Hasn’t he wanted his friend to ask him to his suite all night? But he’s not going to do it. He got burned by some girl years ago, and now he uses that as an excuse to never try again with anyone else. A shame, really. I bet his friend learned a thing or two back in Lothering.”

Varric grunts. “And I don’t think you’ve ever been burned. Not by anyone in particular, anyway.”

Hawke smiles. “A match made in heaven, then.”

Varric’s eyes dart around the room, seeking anything but to meet Hawke’s. The tables thin out as a group of men walk toward the exit. The nug-racing bartender is cleaning a glass and clearing off his counter. Varric sees a way out. “And with that, I think it’s time to take you home.”

“Varric—“

“Come on, Hawke,” he groans as he stands, pulling at the back of Hawke’s chair. “The night’s over.”

Hawke sighs. She looks down at the table, her hands tracing the grain of the wood. “But you know I don’t want to. You said it yourself.”

“I know, Hawke, but Maker’s breath—“

“Let me stay here. Please.”

He’s surprised at how direct she could be, how stern and cold yet desperate her voice could sound. He wonders how many nights she’s spent in Fenris’ mansion, on Merrill’s couch, in Anders’ clinic instead of in her own bed. He imagines the demons that must fill her mind as she sleeps in the lonely estate.

Hawke stands, flashing a small, teasing smile at Varric. “You’ve wanted to invite me there all night, haven’t you?”

“Alright,” Varric finally concedes. “Fine.”

And with that, Hawke nods and walks wordlessly to his quarters.  
\--  
It’s amazing how poorly the alcohol settles within Hawke—she has a sweet spot once she’s around three drinks in, Varric has noticed, usually reached in the heat of a Wicked Grace game. After a drink or two more, she just gets heavy, lethargic, a tad clumsier with her words and her body than normal. 

She falls onto Varric’s bed without any preamble, kicking off her shoes and plopping onto the mattress in otherwise full dress. He leaves her a cup of water and retreats to his desk, listening to a chorus of snores as he sifts through his mail and writes notes in his journal. He glances at her from time to time, a mess of dark skin and dirty day clothes with her legs tangled in his blankets. She sleeps soundly enough, but selfishly, he wonders what she dreams about. He’s never written about anyone dreaming in his serials, hasn’t even guessed at what a dream really feels like for fear of getting it wrong. But he always wonders what goes on inside of Niamh’s head, imagines her waking from nightmares and drifting from reality during the daytime when something—a voice in the market, a smell, siblings walking together—reminds Hawke of what she’s lost.

Varric undoes the tie in his hair and sets pen to paper, writing down nonsense about the day and a to-do list for the next.

Out of nowhere, feeble voice rings out. “Do you ever miss your brother?”

He turns around to see Hawke sitting upright in his bed, drinking from the mug Varric left on the nightstand. She blinks at him as he realizes that she’s fully awake.

“I killed him, Hawke,” he snorts. “You were there.”

“Yeah,” Hawke says as the mug slams back down onto the nightstand. “But it’s more complicated than that. Isn’t it?”

Varric sighs. Family to him isn’t family to Hawke. Family is something Varric distances himself from, as he’s the last of the immediate Tethras family. In his experience, family’s an all-give and no-take type of deal. Hawke’s family made sacrifices for her and her siblings; Varric made all the sacrifices and did all the dirty work to keep himself and Bartrand afloat. Still—it’s strange, being the last one still standing.

“I mean, he was always a pain in the ass. He was always looking for a way to come out on top, at home, at the guild, wherever. So I resented the hell out of him.”

“But do you miss him?” Hawke asks, pointed and direct.

He shrugs. He doesn’t miss his brother in aches and pains or regret causing his death in _‘Maker what have I done’_ dramatics, and he tries his damnedest not to attach sentimentality where it doesn’t belong, but there’s a pang of remorse in his memory of Bartrand. He doesn’t walk around with ghosts, not like Hawke, but the past still lingers. “He was a shit brother, but…I don’t know, he was still my brother. What does it say about me if I don’t miss him?”

“Dunno,” Hawke replies, running her fingers through her hair and moving the dark bangs away from her eyes.

It’s very quiet before Hawke speaks again. “You know, Mother and I fought. More than the usual mother-daughter spats, too. It always felt like… I don’t know. Like she blamed me for what happened to Bethany and Carver.”

“And?” 

Hawke smooths the blanket beneath her hands. “And I always felt like I should hate her or something. Like letting myself resent her would make everything easier to deal with.”  


“And you’ve recently discovered that it doesn’t,” Varric guesses.

Varric catches Hawke’s eyes—downcast, but alert, analyzing the scene before her. He’s seen that look on her before, as she decides which foe it would be most advantageous for her to slice her blade through next, as if now she’s deciding which of many avenues to take their conversation down. “I can’t really hate her, even if I do resent her a bit. And that just makes it worse, Varric—here I thought I had some way out, like it would be easy to just pick up again and move on, but then I go home and realize that she and Bethany are really gone—“

“—and so you stay out until daylight or squat in our friends’ homes so you don’t have to think.”

“I guess,” Hawke mumbles. “But I can’t just up and leave. It was our home.”

“I see.”

“And I fought bloody darkspawn to buy that estate back,” Hawke adds sourly. “And Mother would roll in her grave if I left Sandal there unsupervised.”

Varric offers her a chuckle, contemplates offering a comforting touch, and settles for offering her a lackluster apology.

“I’d offer some wise words,” Varric says, “but hell, let’s face it. We all run from our problems. Can’t say that I don’t.”

Hawke smirks. It’s familiar, comfortable, and so welcome in the midst of a heavy conversation. “Like I said before, a match made in heaven.”

Varric clears his throat in what he hopes comes across as a nonchalant response. It doesn’t, and he knows this immediately, and it’s brutal karma that he’s deflecting the growing itch under his skin as soon as they start talking about deflecting from their problems.

He changes the subject altogether. “So, I gotta know. In all of Kirkwall, where’s the best place for a Hightown bigshot like yourself to squat for the night?”

Hawke snickers. “You mean, which of our friends is the most bearable to spend a full day with?”

He nods.

“Besides you, of course, surprisingly Fenris. If you can get over the smell in his mansion.”

“The elf?”

“He doesn’t ask questions,” she says simply. “And he’s got wine. Always a plus in my book.”

“Hell, Hawke,” Varric replies with a roll of his eyes. “It doesn’t take much to win you over.” 

Hawke doesn’t say anything, she’s too busy burrowing herself beneath his blankets, and he wonders where he’s supposed to position himself for the night. Should he sleep in his chair? In his bed, respectfully shoving himself to one side? In the bed, with a comforting arm around Hawke’s waist? In his bed, with a _suggestive_ arm around Hawke’s waist? 

He settles for sitting on the edge of the bed and kicking off his shoes.

“Probably true,” Hawke murmurs.

“Well, I’ve got ale,” Varric offers, “piss poor ale, but it’s still something.”

Hawke laughs. “I’m used to it. I’m Ferelden, it’s a requirement that all our food be piss poor.”

Varric’s reply comes in a grunt as he lies down beside Niamh, not bothering to move under the covers to be respectful of her space and such. They fall into an easy, comfortable silence, yet Varric lies awake listening to how his and Hawke’s breathing have synched, each inhale in time with the other’s.

Hawke’s the one to break the silence. “You know, I don’t know if you’ve ever invited me back here. For more than a minute at a time, that is.”

“Really?”

“Mhm,” Hawke says. She adds, barely above a whisper, “But the next time you invite me to your quarters, I hope it’s for something more exciting than a near emotional breakdown.”

Varric props himself up, balancing on his forearms. “What did you have in mind?”

“You said something before about rolling my oats, yes?”

_“Sowing,_ Hawke. Not rolling,” Varric corrects her. “Is this the part where you tell me you’ve never sewn them with a dwarf?”

“I guess,” Hawke says, “the dwarf part was more of an afterthought, though. But you were right. I did sow them.”

“Hawke—“

“The fields back in Lothering? A breeding ground, practically—“

_“Hawke—“_

“Don’t mind me,” Hawke teases, “I’m just reminiscing.”

“Do you ever miss it?” He asks, after a pause.

“What,” comes the reply, “the oat sowing or Lothering?”

Varric snorts as he rolls his eyes at her. “Andraste’s ass, Hawke, which do you think?”

“I guess I miss it there,” Hawke says, and Varric feels her shift onto her side. Their eyes meet for a second there, then Hawke nestles her head into a pillow. “But we only lived in Lothering for a few years. We moved around every so often—you know, family of apostates—but really I miss scaring off the kids Carver picked fights with and trying to sell the mabari on the chanter’s board with Bethany when we were little. Those kind of things.”

“You wanted to sell your dog?”

“Different dog,” Hawke says, “it was big and mean and scared the daylights out of Bethany. No one ever wanted it, though."

She sighs, or maybe it's a yawn. It's getting late, after all. "Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. We’re in Kirkwall, Beth and I.”

Varric only replies with a grunt as he feels the day wear upon him. His body is heavy and whatever he drank during the night’s Wicked Grace game settles into a dull thumping sensation behind his skull. He hears Hawke’s breathing steady and closes his eyes.

It’s rare to get a moment of clarity from Hawke. She talks a big game as if her words and her façade of an ego are the only things supporting her, as if there’s no one behind her to catch her fall or hear her cries of anguish. But she’s not—she’s got an army of misfit toys and displaced soldiers and burnt out dwarves at her disposal, hers for the taking whenever she needs a hand.

She may have a battalion behind her, but he feels like he’s scored a small victory, being able to get past her façade, past Hawke, and straight to Niamh. 

But in any case, he hopes they’ll be here again, some other night, and Hawke will spend the night acting upon her noncommittal flirtations, and Varric will learn what she looks like in her small clothes.


End file.
